Sonnet notes 6

Sonnet 15, line 9: “the conceit of this inconstant stay”

This inconstant, this brief stay on Earth, our too short lives—how much does this thought drive human action? The desire to make something that will last longer than ourselves, to build monuments, to write poetry! For fourteen sonnets our poet has been focused on the need to procreate, for the Young Man to have children to ensure that his beauty will last beyond his lifetime. Now, he says, his poetry will do the same, that he will engraft him anew “all in war with Time.” In Sonnet 12, breed seemed inadequate to the task of braving Time. Three sonnets later, poetry is ready for all-out war!